Storifying Research Findings for the General Public in an English for Academic Purposes Course for Pre-service Speech-Language Pathologists

Abstract

Most English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses at university normally focus on traditional academic presentations. Students are often taught how to deliver conference-like presentations where the intended audience is members of the academic community. With the advent of digital and mobile technology, the advocacy of open science, and an increasing call from scientists and scholars regarding the sharing of research findings beyond academic publications (e.g., McCabe & Browning, 2010; Melvin et al., 2020; Ross-Hellauer et al., 2020), it is high time students learned how to disseminate scientific knowledge to the general public (as this requires different sets of skills) to increase public awareness and enhance public well-being, as well as to inform educational and health practice and policy. One powerful avenue is through the creation of digital stories. In this presentation, we will share our experiences and reflection on the development and teaching of the digital storytelling component of an undergraduate EAP course for pre-service speech-language pathologists in Hong Kong. In this course, students are required to reflect on the research findings they obtained in their study and storify them for the general public in the format of a digital story. To facilitate more widespread research uptake and understanding, students have to consider the target audience and the settings in which the findings are consumed. We believe this way of communicating findings and academic knowledge to laypeople can vividly capitalise on the power of storytelling for community engagement: “to unlock grass-roots knowledge, explore dilemmas, develop community resilience, [and] engender change”.